If the weather is reasonable I love to sit outside in one of the cafes and do a bit of people-watching. I make it a point never to eat in any hotel-restaurant, too expensive and usually the food is not very exciting. But De Roode Leeuw is an exception.

De Roode Leeuw belongs to ‘Neerlands Dis Associatie’. This stands for ‘Dutch Dishes Association’ and guarantees that the food they serve is of high quality (all right, what else would you expect?) but more importantly they serve traditional Dutch dishes, using Dutch meat, dairy and vegetables.

I can recommend their lunches, which are called ‘koffietafel’. If you know a bit of Dutch you may recognise this word. It means: coffee table. No we don’t eat tables. ‘Koffietafel’ simply means lunch. These days we also use the word ‘lunch’, but we borrowed this from English.

’Koffietafel’ always implies a traditional Dutch lunch.

Koffietafel ‘Rokin’ € 13.39:
soup of the day, several kinds of bread, cold meat, cheese, chicken pie, Dutch style and fruit. A choice of coffee, tea or milk.

Koffietafel ‘Damrak’ € 18.38:
Cold chicken salad, several kinds of bread, cold meat, cheese and ‘vleeskroket’, this is a Dutch delicacy which you must try. It is a kind of deep fried meat dumpling.

I ordered Koffietafel Damrak because I like ‘kroket’.